This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The Center hosted a workshop on primarily non-crystalline x-ray diffraction studies in structural biology on April 9-12, 2009. It consisted of 2 days of lectures and 2 days of practical sessions. The lectures covered theoretical and experimental aspects of x-ray scattering by non-crystalline matter, computational methods for data interpretation as well as some of most recent research results. The primary focus of the workshop was solution x-ray scattering studies, which currently make up over 50% of beam time allocation on BL4-2. The workshop also covered related topics including recent lipid and fiber x-ray diffraction studies which deal with partially ordered systems. The majority of the participants uses macromolecular crystallography as their primary structural tool, and was interested in using non-crystalline diffraction techniques, primarily solution x-ray scattering, to complement their higher resolution structural studies. There were 15 lecturers/tutors and 20 participants in the workshop, including several from similar Centers from other synchrotron facilities. Approximately 2 hours of beam time on BL4-2 was allocated to each of ten participants in the experimental practical sessions to measure their own samples. The SMB staff hosted these experimental sessions, and Dmitri Svergun (EMBL-Hamburg) and SJ Kim (Sali group, UCSF) led computational practical sessions, which were attended by most of the participants and many lecturers. Some of the workshop participants later submitted rapid access or standard experimental proposals to continue their studies.